Three Harris County detention officers will not stand trial on charges that they assaulted an incarcerated person by punching him in the head and throwing him to the ground.
Citing insufficient evidence, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office dismissed a misdemeanor assault charge against John Ziesemer last month. Court records show that a judge agreed to dismiss the same charge against Ezihuo Osiminibeke last month in return for completing a pre-trial diversion program. And a prosecutor said in court this week that the misdemeanor assault case against Jimmy Poole will be dismissed the week of Dec. 16 after he completes “Interpersonal Communication in a Correctional Facility,” the second of two in-person courses at the Harris County Sheriff’s Office academy he agreed to take.
The dismissals come about six months after a grand jury indicted the officers for their role in the alleged beating of Adael Gonzalez-Garcia. Ziesemer was accused of throwing Gonzalez-Garcia to the ground, while Osiminibeke and Poole were accused of punching Gonzalez-Garcia in the head as they tried to subdue him.
In the wake of the indictment, all three officers were “relieved of duty” by the sheriff’s office, meaning they were assigned duties that did not involve interacting with incarcerated people. Ziesemer and Osiminibeke have since gone back to their regular duties, while Poole is still barred from interacting with detainees while his case is pending, Jason Spencer, chief of staff for Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, said in an email on Tuesday.
Spencer added that Osiminibeke served a one-day suspension for the altercation, while Ziesemer was found not to have violated policy. Poole’s case is still pending administrative review.
“It’s horrible,” Randall Kallinen, a Houston attorney who is representing Gonzalez-Garcia in his civil suit against Harris County, said of the outcome of the cases. “They almost killed him.”
Kallinen said Gonzalez-Garcia has not been able to work since the November 2022 altercation, which left him in a coma for several days. “This might cause him to be disabled for the rest of his life,” Kallinen added.
In a statement, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office said: “A prosecutor’s job is not to seek convictions, it’s to seek justice. We feel these resolutions were in the best interest of the community.”
Gonzalez-Garcia found himself in the Harris County Jail after he was arrested the Wednesday before Thanksgiving in 2022 on an outstanding DWI warrant out of Walker County, the sheriff’s office previously said. Gonzalez-Garcia was taken to the jail’s clinic the next day after he fell from the top bunk of a bunk bed, according to officials.
The altercation ensued while Gonzalez-Garcia was being escorted from the clinic to a cell block. The sheriff’s office has previously said Gonzalez-Garcia became combative and tried to punch one of the officers, which Kallinen denies. The sheriff’s office has also claimed that Gonzalez-Garcia sustained a head injury when he fell to the ground and hit his head.
“He was only doing what’s called passive resistance,” Kallinen said in a phone interview, adding that security camera footage captured Poole punching Gonzalez-Garcia in the head at least four times. “That means when you’re backing away from someone, like, ‘I don’t want to, don’t touch me,’ that sort of thing.”
Attorneys Justin Keiter and Reynaldo Ramirez Jr., who represented Ziesemer and Osiminibeke, respectively, did not respond to a request for comment. Poole’s attorney, Joshua Normand, declined to comment when reached by phone.
For years, the Harris County Jail in downtown Houston has been understaffed and overcrowded, leading to a culture in which civil rights attorneys like Kallinen say excessive force against detainees is common. He fears the outcome of the cases against Ziesemer, Osiminibeke and Poole will only embolden officers who regularly use what he views as disproportionate and questionable force.
The fact that the officers were charged at all is significant, said David Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who studies policing. Harris said prosecutors historically have been reticent to pursue charges against police and correctional officers, largely because they perceive themselves to be on the same team as the officers.
Yet Harris said he finds it strange that the Harris County District Attorney’s Office decided to present evidence of the officers’ potential criminality to a grand jury, only to dismiss the cases six months later. Grand juries issue indictments, or written statements accusing someone of a crime when they determine that there is probable cause that a crime has been committed.
“To turn around later and say we don’t have enough evidence is very unusual,” Harris said.
Harris County still has to contend with Gonzalez-Garcia’s civil lawsuit. Filed in the Southern District of Texas in February 2023, the suit was dismissed in March by U.S. Magistrate Christina Bryan. In her decision, the federal magistrate said Gonzalez-Garcia had failed to establish that an official policy was the “moving force” behind the alleged constitutional violation. The suit was revived after Kallinen asked to amend the complaint, or legal document that outlines allegations.
Correction: A previous version of this story stated Assistant District Attorney (ADA) Jarrell Gibson presented evidence to a grand jury that indicted the officers. The ADA who presented the evidence was Kimberly Clark, not Gibson. And the classes that Jimmy Poole agreed to take were in-person at the Harris County Sheriff’s Office academy, not online.
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